


Being Human

by sittingoverheredreaming



Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-19
Updated: 2017-08-19
Packaged: 2018-12-17 11:43:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11850873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sittingoverheredreaming/pseuds/sittingoverheredreaming
Summary: Shortly after becoming Setsuna, Sailor Pluto gets a surprise visitor.





	Being Human

Setsuna is surprised when there’s a knock at the door. She’s still getting used to surprise, that particular human reaction, beyond the mere unexpected. There were never any true surprises at the door. She spent to long examining what could come to be for that.

She moves to the door. There is a peep hole, but she chooses not to look. She savors the surprise while she can have it, Time only knows how long she’ll get this form. She turns the knob, and out in the hall is someone she’d never have guessed would be there.

“Can I come in?” Minako asks. A plastic convenience store bag hangs in the crook of her elbow, hiding a small box. Setsuna nods and moves aside.

Minako sets her bag down on the little kitchen table and surveys the walls and shelves. “You’ve made it nice here.”

“Thank you.”

“I probably shouldn’t say so, but I half expect it to be totally blank. Bare, I mean, besides necessities.”

Setsuna smiled. She had jumped at the opportunity to have a home rather than just an inhabitance. It may have been frivolous, but she’d scouted thrift stores and flea markets for bright rugs and paintings and knick-knacks, filling every corner of her little apartment with color and warmth and reminders of all life could be. “Have I given you that impression of who I am?”

“No.” Minako runs her fingers around the edge of a red placemat. “And I’m glad for it.” She looks up through her bangs, a gesture Setsuna knows is uncharacteristically shy. “We’re not so different, you and I.”

It is not a comparison she would have made on her own, but Setsuna sees it. They remember, the two of them, and they are bound by the past. “I suppose that’s true.”

“I’m happy you’re here,” Minako says, and Setsuna understand she does not mean in the apartment. “And I thought it might be nice for you to have something.” She reaches into the plastic bag and pulls out a tin of tea. “I wasn’t sure what you would like, but this seemed right.”

Setsuna takes it from her to examine. The tin bears a simple design, all rich shades of burnt orange save for white letters—Hot Cinnamon Spice. She opens the top and breathes in the sharp scent of the tea. Something rolls over in her chest, or so it feels. She realizes she’s never been given a gift before.

“Would you like to have some with me?”

“If you’ll have me.”

Setsuna finds her eyes tearing as she retrieves her newly bought tea set from her cabinet. “I didn’t think I’d actually be using this,” she admits.

Minako smiles. “Use everything at least once. Break some of it.” She takes a seat and tilts her chair back on two legs. “This isn’t like then. Nothing’s pristine or royal, except technically Usagi. And even then, she doesn’t need the same sort of coddling.”

“Queen Serenity would be appalled to hear that.”

“Queen Serenity would be appalled about a lot of things. But hey, she’s the one who made us human.” She frowns, looking Setsuna over. “Or most of us, anyway.”

“I’m not sure how it works either, before you ask,” Setsuna says, pouring water into two porcelain cups. “This may well be a hiccup in her parting wish.”

“Whatever it is, you deserve the break.” Minako takes a small sip of the tea. “We all deserve to be a little something more than what she made us.”

It is hard sometimes, even from afar at her door, to see both the soldier and the child in any of the girls. Sometimes they are so much the Silver Millenuim warriors, living and fighting and dying for their cause, but sometimes they are children, true children the way none of them had ever gotten to be in that life. Now, here at this little kitchen table, Setsuna sees both in Minako, feels something like both in herself, though she is by no standard a child. She reaches for Mianko’s hand before she can think herself out of it. “It’s strange to be so human.”

“It’s strange to be so alien. But you’ll get used to it.”

The tea is warm, both in temperature and the way it makes Setsuna’s chest feel, the way the flavor seems to curl into her soul.  “Tell me about it. Tell be about being human.”

Minako smiles. They talk until the tea is long gone.


End file.
